{"id":371,"date":"2007-01-24T14:17:02","date_gmt":"2007-01-24T20:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2007\/01\/24\/the-kinder-gentler-military\/"},"modified":"2007-01-24T14:17:02","modified_gmt":"2007-01-24T20:17:02","slug":"the-kinder-gentler-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=371","title":{"rendered":"The Kinder, Gentler Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

See if you can see what’s missing from this Op-Ed by Barbara C. Crosby<\/a>\u00a0this Monday in the Strib:<\/p>\n

A friend of mine, whose son was just notified that his National Guard unit will have its tour in Iraq extended, asks, Why aren’t there massive protests against this misguided war? She remembers the Vietnam era and the sustained protest movement of the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, only a tiny portion of the American people ever <\/em>protested against the Vietnam war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I digress.\u00a0 While “a genuine memory of what happened in this nation during Vietnam” is indeed missing, that’s not what I’m shooting for.<\/p>\n

Easy answer: No draft. Indeed, the antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was dramatically subdued by President Richard Nixon’s replacement of the existing draft with an annual lottery that, in effect, cut in half the number of young men who were vulnerable to conscription. Later, the nation adopted an all-volunteer policy for the armed services.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s an “easy answer” – and wrong, as far as it goes.\u00a0 It’s true, we don’t have a draft – but then, a minority of those who served in Vietnam were draftees, and the majority of the protesters were on deferments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now our nation is at war with terrorism, and the volunteer army is stretched to the limit, even with a questionable reliance on National Guard units. So should our policymakers reinstitute the military draft administered by the euphemistically named Selective Service?<\/p>\n

A few members of Congress say yes, and perhaps they are right. A truly universal draft would diminish the current system’s disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities. And, no doubt, a return to the draft would heighten opposition to the current military strategy in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for the first time, Ms. Crosby skirts perilously close to…not the <\/em>truth, but a <\/em>truth.<\/p>\n

Conscription – the draft – forces a nation to be very <\/em>conservative about the wars they fight.\u00a0 If a war doesn’t have very broad, popular support (like World War II, which was largely fought with draftees) or involve the nation’s survival (all Israeli males serve), draftee armies are very <\/em>blunt instruments that tend to fight poorly (see the Russians in Chechnya) and\/or with draconian enforcement from above (the Russians in Afghanistan).\u00a0<\/p>\n

My own proposal is that our nation consider instituting a universal draft of nearly everyone between ages 18 and 65, male and female, except for parents of minor children.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, the oldsters in this group (and I’m one) can’t do a lot of heavy lifting (unless we’re talking ideas and such), but we could work on nation-building endeavors, such as microfinance projects or educational programs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can we see what’s missing yet?<\/p>\n

Of course, the designers of a new draft would have to be creative in order to minimize central bureaucracy. One idea is to rely, as in the past, on local draft boards that would randomly call up eligible individuals until a board’s quota was filled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Something else <\/em>is missing here.\u00a0 No, not the big kahuna thing I’m really <\/em>looking for – but I have to wonder if Ms. Crosby really knows what she’s talking about.\u00a0 She seems to be mixing up “the draft” – a lottery that picks and chooses what it needs – with “universal service”, like in Israel or Switzerland, where everyone <\/em>between ages 20 and 50 (and sometimes older) serves in the reserves, civil defense or some other area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They are very different ideas; the “draft”, as it was practiced in the US from the forties to 1973, was inherently vastly more unfair than the “disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities” Ms. Crosby kvetches about; upper-middle-class kids, from families with money or influence or savvy, routinely got deferred or found less-dangerous ways to while away their eligible years.<\/p>\n

Universal service – where everyone <\/em>who’s medically able serves 1-3 years in the regular military and then a number of years in the reserves, like in Israel and Switzerland (and in some ways Norway), whether your parents are plumbers or Senators.\u00a0 The CEO’s son drives the tank commanded by the farmer’s kid; the mayor’s son loads bombs onto a plane flown by a bus driver’s son.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They couldn’t be more different, with one exception; they both impel a nation to be much more conservative about using the military.\u00a0 Most heavily-draftee or universal service militaries are only notionally able to serve outside their own nation’s borders (nations like Israel and Germany can only send their\u00a0special forces and all-volunteer elites like\u00a0paratroops and fighter pilots\u00a0overseas, usually only for very brief periods or with immense support from the US).<\/p>\n

Talking seriously about a universal draft might cause us to question our current reliance on the youngest adults to bear so much of the war burden… Maybe we should send tough grandmas to war at an equal rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this is just stupid.\u00a0 Fighting – and having a reasonable chance of surviving against an enemy that really does <\/em>want to kill you (something few Democrats recognize in the current world situation) takes springy knees and sharp eyes and keen ears, not to mention the ability to be taught to do something utterly unnatural to you.\u00a0 Ask any drill sergeant who is easier to turn into a soldier, an 18 year old or a 25 year old…<\/p>\n

I hope the nation also would consider an ongoing requirement that every 18-year-old put in two years of public service either in the military or in a community development program. Such a move could vastly expand VISTA and the Peace Corps, which in turn might do much to improve conditions that spawn hopelessness (and prime the terrorist recruitment pipeline) in the poorest parts of the world today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would volunteers “improve” jihadist hatred of everything the West stands for – indeed, be proof of it? – or would they be merely hostages on the hoof?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In such a scenario, special incentives may be necessary to ensure that enough young people sign up for military duty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s one:\u00a0 make serving the nation an honorable profession, or at least a\u00a0time in one’s life where one is part of an elite brotherhood set apart from the rest of society by a code that\u00a0outsiders just don’t understand.<\/p>\n

Sort of like what we have today, in a military that actually does the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another approach would be to require all young citizens to go through both military training and nonviolent conflict resolution and serve two years as members of the military or peace brigades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure what the best approach is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n

Ms. Crosby seems to think that military is like high school – a\u00a0captive audience that needs to be exposed to\u00a0a bunch of abstruse concepts for their own good, as judged by society.<\/p>\n

It’s not.\u00a0 It’s an arm of the government that tries to kill, maim or drag to the\u00a0bargaining table by force those who would do us harm.\u00a0 It’s a specialized trade, with skills and standards that\u00a0occupy mens’ lives for decades in the learning.\u00a0 The professionals that make up the backbone of our military, the\u00a0greatest on\u00a0earth,\u00a0devote their lives to learning the craft and art of war every bit as much as any other professional – and their lives depend on it more than most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that is what’s missing from Ms. Crosby’s piece; any sense of what a military is for, and why it exists.\u00a0 Is it a social program?\u00a0 A vehicle to engineer society?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because\u00a0Ms. Crosby certainly shows no understanding on any other level:\u00a0<\/p>\n

This policy shift makes sense if we are truly serious about fighting a War on Terror and improving global and domestic conditions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, as noted by people who differ from Ms. Crosby\u00a0in knowing what they’re talking about<\/a>, draftee armies are the worst <\/em>instrument for fighting that kind of war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See if you can see what’s missing from this Op-Ed by Barbara C. Crosby\u00a0this Monday in the Strib: A friend of mine, whose son was just notified that his National Guard unit will have its tour in Iraq extended, asks, Why aren’t there massive protests against this misguided war? She remembers the Vietnam era and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}